Cloud Operations Best Practices for SAP SuccessFactors Run Operations

Run Operations for SAP software systems and services are typically embedded in the organizational and procedural models and practices of Customer Center of Expertise (CCOE) and therein the Operations Control Center (OCC). The latter is responsible for the two main processes of the Run Operations scenario Detect-to-Correct: Event Management and Continuous Improvement.

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See the appendix for an introduction and further discussions of Operations Control Center topics in and for hybrid and cloud-centric system and solution landscapes. In this document, operations topics for running SAP SuccessFactors are suggested and outlined. The intention is to provide and refer to a list of Cloud Operations Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs) which address these operations topics, and which have been made available for SAP SuccessFactors. This article focuses on operations challenges for which the customer of an as a Service software is responsible for according to the simplified Cloud Responsibility Model.

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Please note: While SAP’s Customer Center of Expertise and Operations Control Center concepts are aligned and compliant with standards such as ITIL, the operations topics or challenges listed below are more functional in nature, i.e. represent a framework for activities in an Operations team or applications, features and functions of an Operations toolset – rather than a structured set of processes. However, these activities mapped to functionality are part of the ITIL inspired IT processes Event Management and Continuous Improvement and hence part of the OCC and CCOE organizational model.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011146 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Organizational Model

Application Monitoring

Application Monitoring provides application specific insights in cloud services and systems, including background job/business process automation monitoring, end-point availability monitoring and performance monitoring, configuration and change monitoring, access and security monitoring, usage monitoring and metering, as well as potentially further aspects.

Goal: Ensure the health of the application processing and measure the basic quality of service as well as usage.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011164 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Application Monitoring and Metering

Business Process Analytics and Improvement

Business Process Analytics and Improvement allows the analysis and visualization of business documents/transactional data throughput and backlog as well as quality of master data.

Goal: Ensure the structured and visual identification of functional painpoints for improvement purposes.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011096 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Business Process Analytics and Improvement

Business Process Monitoring

Business Process Monitoring provides real-time monitoring of Business Process as well as Business Process Step related process performance and key performance indicators.

Goal: Ensure the health of business process and steps of business services and detect anomalies in process executions.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011117 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring

Data Management

Data Management ensures persistence and integrity of data as well as data interoperability and data volume management.

Goal: Ensure that data models and storage are documented, data volume is monitored and analyzed, initial and delta data loads are governed and logged – error situations being resolvable by repeated loads not leading to permanent data inconsistencies.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011149 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Data Management

Event and Alert Management

Event and Alert Management allows the handling of events and alerts efficiently and efficiently, consuming data from the monitoring use cases and calculating alerts to be followed up with the help of predefined root cause analysis and alert follow up procedures/guides (including notification management and automatic event reaction).

Goal: Ensure 24/7 structured, guided, immediate follow up of events and alerts with the same quality.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011155 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Event & Alert Management and Incident Management

Integration Monitoring

Integration Monitoring provides real-time monitoring of interfaces, calls and/or message flows, i.e. the handling of single message flows processed by SAP Cloud Platform Integration as well as peer-to-peer interface usage via REST service or SOAP service calls.

Goal: Ensure the health of interfaces and interface steps of business services and detect anomalies of interface executions.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011108 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Integration Monitoring

Integration with 3rd Party ITSM Tools and Systems

Inbound and outbound integration from and to application management toolsets and systems ensures a best of breed approach for Operations.

Goal: Ensure that APIs and content templates for metrics, events, KPIs/PPIs, Scores etc. are available on all relevant granularity levels at least for data consumption by Operations platforms aka managing systems.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011110 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Integration with 3rd Party Tools and Systems

Job Management

Job Management allows for the documenting, planning, scheduling, and execution of IT automation, aka background jobs, involving the documentation, scheduling, and monitoring of tasks in a defined and guided manner.

Goal: Ensure that background jobs are documented, scheduled, and governed to automate task execution.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011128 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Mass Processing Runtime Management

Synthetic User (User Experience) and Real User Monitoring

User Monitoring allows to get real end-users’ as well as synthetic end-users’ requests measured for performance and availability.

Goal: Ensure with synthetic user monitoring that simulations of end-user behavior based on selected scenarios can be run and measured.

Ensure with real user monitoring that end users’ experience of the application step performance and availability are measured.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011095 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Synthetic User Monitoring

System Health Monitoring

System Monitoring allows Service Providers to monitor managed systems, databases, and hosts.

Goal: Ensure the health of cloud services to the degree possible with the information provided by the cloud service provider.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011109 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: System Health Monitoring

Workflow Management

Workflow Management allows for the documenting, planning, scheduling, and execution of workflows, involving the distribution of tasks and joint subsequent completion of tasks in a defined and guided manner.

Goal: Ensure that workflows are documented, scheduled, and governed to automate workflows and task execution.

Knowledge Base Article: 3011148 – SAP SuccessFactors Operations Best Practice: Workflow Management